Traffic
by Punisher Ops
Summary: Punisher works to bring down a global human trafficking network based in NYC.


Traffic

Punisher

1

City of New York

It was time.

Rigging the stolen car's gas pedal and steering wheel some fifty yards beyond the scum infested crime base directly ahead, Punisher began his latest vigilante assault.

Stepping away from the car, he let it screech forward. It shot forth like a projectile, with the trunk being packed with tanks of stolen fuel and ammonium nitrate. Heavily armed for his one-man war on crime, as usual, he chose to use older weaponry for his initial assault phase.

Collapsing back to the darkness to make his covert approach to the crime base, Punisher secured his lightweight modified assault carbine and readied his archery kit for combat. In addition to his combat knife and sidearm he also carried a tomahawk for Indian style fighting.

The car roared ahead of him as he made his slower advance under the cover of night.

With no lights, the patrolling criminal sentries could only hear the vehicle's general approach but not pinpoint its exact yet mobile position. The result was their detection of the car, their tensing and crying out in alarm – but ultimately an inability to stop the vehicle before it crashed into the metal gate head on.

The car exploded immediately after colliding with the front gate, sending a massive fuel induced fireball in all possible directions. The screams of the sentry thugs closest to it were many as they were consumed by the merciless enveloping inferno.

Punisher, despite his considerable distance back still, was no less tactically effective. Modified bow ready with a mounted set of arrows for shooting, Punisher crouched in the cover of darkness, took aim at the first thug sentry positioned along the base's outer wall walkway, and fired.

This sentry, surprised like his fellow thugs, couldn't have defended himself from the speeding arrow that entered his skull an instant later from the night. He fell off the walkway to flop dead upon the ground. The other thugs were too busy and alarmed by what had happened with the exploding car to take notice.

Bow already reloaded as designed to do; Punisher aimed for the next target and released his next flying projectile for him. Once that thug was hit similarly through the skull for an instant kill, Punisher continued to advance, ready to continue surgical takedowns as needed.

By now the base's alertness was high. A dozen thugs exited the base's interior compound with automatic weapons and spread out to prepare for what they likely thought was some kind of massive law enforcement assault.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Punisher angled west in the night for a weak point in the outer wall's structure. Securing the archery kit upon clearing the immediate area, Punisher crouched by the stress point in the wall, removed some black market military grade explosive from his tactical vest, affixed it to the wall, then fell back before collapsing prone to the ground. Readying the remote detonator to the charge, Punisher enabled it.

That part of the wall was taken in fire an instant later, further confusing the thugs as they sought to repel any police assault upon their base. When none came, they grew more puzzled.

Remaining prone, Punisher readied his suppressed carbine for combat. Taking on a traditional sniper role now, Punisher sighted in on his first target beyond the explosive breached wall and fired. The powerful slug killed the targeted thug even before he finished falling to the ground. Punisher found two more targets and killed them in rapid succession.

The thugs detected the sniper fire as they closed in to secure the breached wall, but Punisher was already up and repositioning.

It was only now that they returned fire in the general darkness of where Punisher had been but was no longer.

Punisher dropped prone to the ground, rolled a few meters on the pavement to his right, came up to a crouch, aimed, and fired his weapon again. Three more thugs were killed by suppressed sniper fire.

Instead of returning fire, the thugs did not. Punisher was puzzled this time by this and prepared to relocate.

A bullhorn squeaked to life over the fires that raged, and a thug then said, "Whoever the hell you are, asshole, we have hostages. If you don't show yourself right now, we'll start blowing their damn brains out right here, right now – starting with the kids. Your call."

Nothing in Punisher's intel suggested that they had hostages. These were midlevel thugs only – responsible for bank robberies and home invasions. While it was certainly possible for them to be involved in other crime ops, this still came as a surprise to Punisher. It could also have been a bluff, but Punisher wouldn't take the chance that it wasn't; he needed proof either way.

Moreover, his gut told him that if there were indeed hostages that it pertained to something more sinister than initially realized.

Contemplating his reply – though he didn't intend to surrender – sirens were now audible on the air. This not only suggested to the thugs that Punisher was alone, but that he wasn't a cop by any means.

"I mean it! Show yourself now!"

If Punisher called out for proof of their claim, he would give away his position. If the cops arrived and the thugs grew fearful, it could turn into a slaughter.

Punisher cursed himself now – both for the assault method and lack of better info gathering. It could now cost innocent lives...

"Don't believe me, huh?"

There was a brief silence, before several thugs took up visible positions on the outer wall walkway. Each thug had a clearly visible hostage in their possession – one a sobbing young woman, and the other a terrified toddler. Through his night vision carbine scope, Punisher could also tell that both the woman and small child were in tattered, soiled clothing. The hostages too, like their clothing, were dirty. This suggested to Punisher that they'd been in captivity for a while.

It was at this evidence that Punisher gleaned greater insight. As the human sex slave trade was an ever expanding and profitable criminal enterprise around the world, he was starting to think this situation was related to that somehow. It was also possible these midlevel thugs were part of a bigger crime op – one that even NYPD or the feds weren't yet aware of.

"As I'm a nice guy and father of two kids myself, I'll spare the kid if you show yourself..."

The first responders were closing fast...

"No...? Kill the bitch; we can always get another."

Punisher's trigger finger tensed as he sighted his crosshairs on the thug holding the woman hostage. The woman grew hysterical in his grasp as the thug put his gun to the side of her head. She struggled, but it didn't matter...

The thug pulled the trigger...

Gore exited the other side of the woman's head. The thug then threw her lifeless body over the wall to land in a heap upon the cold urban pavement.

The police cruisers screeched to a halt first as fire and rescue did similar after them. The thugs pulled back, keeping the child alive – for now.

Punisher dropped his carbine to the ground, fell to his hands and knees, and felt nauseous waves of emotion seeking to overwhelm him.

Images of his murdered family filled his mental eye. It was his perpetual reminder of how he'd failed to save them, just as he had this young woman victim just now.

His body convulsed as he sobbed. Still concealed from thug and cop alike, Punisher's training asserted itself at that moment, seeking to control the emotion that sought to expose him.

Part of him didn't want to do what his training suggested, and this was reinforced by the sight of the murdered woman lying not far from his position.

He almost gave in to his feelings, but then another image filled his mind – that of the toddler. A child, like the other hostages that the thugs likely had in their captivity, was still alive – and needing saving.

The cops and firefighters went to work to secure the now barricaded thugs and their hostages. It would only be moments before his concealment was compromised.

If he was going to act, he had to do it now...

Clearing the breached wall with his scope, Punisher further saw the thugs pulling back to be completely indoors within the base's main building.

Punisher made his choice and took a calculated risk. Holding his rifle tight against his chest, he sprinted forward from cover and for the breached wall that continued to burn like the main gate did.

Several cops spotted him, as anticipated.

"We've got movement here! You, freeze!"

It was too late though. Before the cops could point their weapons at the suddenly running form of a gunman to further enforce their verbal commands, he was already past the breached wall and into the crime base's interior area.

The thugs were still pulling back into the main building's interior to help ensure their barricade and to buy time as he entered. They didn't take ready notice of him as he ran for the closest bit of cover and dove to the ground behind it.

Punisher waited a moment before doing anything else. When hearing no thug shouts of discovery or taking enemy fire, he reasoned he retained stealth for now. As for the cops, they would perform area containment only and set up a perimeter, let fire do its thing, and await SWAT. That too bought Punisher some time to resume his mission here – originally a raid now combined with a rescue element.

Punisher planned for the next stage of his mission here, changing it to stealth now. He prepared to move out.


End file.
